BIG SKY BY KITTY THOMAS: BOOK REVIEW

Veronica’s world is falling apart around her, she has always lived outside her means and now the bills are piling up and she’s being evicted from her crappy apartment (after she was forced to downsize from the penthouse). And, she’s been so worried about how she’s going to live and where she’s going to stay that she’s let her work slide and her boss just fired her!! She’s burned too many bridges in the industry and she doesn’t know how she’ll find a job.

She met an honest to god cowboy at the diner the morning she got fired, in New York!?! How weird is that? She was incredibly rude to him being a true New Yorker and all. But he comes across her again after she’s been fired and offers her a job at his ranch in Vermont. A job she turns down, he’s just a bit too creepy for her tastes. However, Luke decides he won’t take no for an answer and kidnaps her! She looks like his deceased wife and he’s determined to turn her into Trish, making her submit to his every desire. He and his ranch hands quickly turn her into their personal sex slave, something Trish had done willingly before she died in childbirth. At first, Veronica tries to escape, but eventually decides that it would be pointless as she has nowhere to go and nothing to get back to. And what happens when the horror of your situation turns into something that you love and don’t want to live without?

I’m really at a loss for words on this book … and if you knew me in real life you’d know how rare that is! But don’t worry I’ll find some to articulate what I’m thinking.

The synopsis that is actually printed on this book is nothing like what I’ve described above. The storyline printed on the book is actually very benign and innocent sounding, giving no hint to the depravity and kink that is really held within the book’s pages. In fact, I contemplated if I was even going to write a review for this book, a little embarrassed that I had read it as it truly seems like a fact that should be hidden and kept behind closed doors. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a prude by any stretch of the imagination, and often need to settle into a good “whore book” to let off some steam, but this was a whore book to the extreme. I have never read a book that was quite this dark and depraved before now. I felt pretty dirty reading it, and nothing against the author, but I can’t even imagine the debauched mind that actually wrote the story. I guess that could be why the author appears to be using an alias …. there is no way I’d want my real name associated with this kind of story either. And, apparently this is one of many like it in her repertoire.

As I’m sure you can surmise from my description of the plot, Luke is heavily into domination, bringing the feisty Veronica to heel under his command. He enjoys humiliating her in front of his employees and sharing her whenever he can. She is no more than an animal to him, as he and his ranch hands often refer to her as their cow and even inject her with hormones so she can be a “good cow” and give them milk. I think I can safely say this is the strangest kink book I’ve ever read in my life. But with all that said … *if* you can get past the objectifying of women and have had a dry spell for a while, this book could very easily get your motor revving, despite the fact that the sex scenes actually are not that detailed. I personally didn’t have as many problems with the objectification as I thought I might. Probably because Veronica is under no illusions that Luke actually loves her. He makes it clear she’s an object, his possession, there solely for his own pleasure, and something that he can use as he wishes. I have found with some other BDSM books that I get annoyed with the female leads being treated like crap, but then gushing how good the guy is to her, Maya Banks’s Enforcer series is a good example of this! However, there is no false pretenses or naive characterization in this book. In fact, Veronica was kind of a spoiled bitch in the beginning and it made me wonder if maybe what happened to her was a bit of karma payback, not that anyone deserves to be treated badly, of course.

Throughout this novel I kept thinking how depraved it was (I’ve used that word enough in this review, I think), but the ending left me just thinking how weird the story was. It is just so incredibly strange. I don’t foresee me seeking out more books by this author, but if kink is your thing, then you may want to give it a read.